Professor McCall explains in a scholarly yet accessible manner the core principles of the usury doctrine. Tracing its history from Biblical texts, through Aristotelian philosophy and Roman law, to the great scholastic synthesis, Professor McCall separates the unchanging principles from the changes in their applications to new economic realities. With debt, personal, business and government spiraling out of control and massive insolvencies of ancient nations like Greece, contemporary economic theory has offered little in response. Professor McCall contributes the wisdom of the centuries in a concise and readable study.

Endorsements

"Professor McCall places the issues confronting our debt based economy in a deeply rooted historical context. His book shows how the Church has preserved the ancient insights of Biblical teaching, Roman law and Aristotelian philosophy and how these provide a framework for addressing the global problem of indebtedness." --Andrew V. Abela, Ph.D., Chairman, Department of Business & Economics, The Catholic University of America

"The Church and the Usurers goes boldly where few conventional economists seem prepared to follow. In seeing usury at the heart of the present global crisis, Brian McCall is using ancient and timeless wisdom to illustrate not merely the roots of the modern economic malaise but the way forward into a fiscally just future." --Joseph Pearce, Author of Small is Still Beautiful: Economics as If Families Matter

"Usury isn't a simple topic to understand. It is like completing a sudoku puzzle. One must spend time and deep thought in order to understand what is and what isn't usury. But when you have completed the process, like with a sudoku puzzle, you recognize that the solution could be no other way. Professor McCall does a lot of that hard work for the reader. This book remains intellectually challenging because the topic is new, or at least new to the modern reader." Taken from the Preface to the Book --Anthony Santelli II, Ph.D., CEO, AES Capital, Founder and Board Member, Catholic Finance Association

"In this marvelously clear and compact study, Professor McCall explains what usury is, how its evils have provoked massive distortions in our society through the system of money, banking and credit, what the Church really teaches on usury, and the enduring relevance of that teaching. This book is a decisive blow against a major facet of the economic liberalism condemned by Pope after Pope. The Church and the Usurers is a landmark work." --Christopher A. Ferrara, Author of The Church and the Libertarian

"Only a fool would deny that we are on the brink of a financial meltdown of global scope and epic proportions, yet even smart and generally sensible people hardly know what to do about our future. With deep learning and blazing insight, Brian McCall offers in this book both a diagnosis and a cure. Our ongoing free-fall into economic chaos is caused by the ubiquitous but unnoticed practice of usury, the charging of a profit on a loan of money (as distinguished from the investment of capital). The cure is to re-appropriate and abide by the Catholic Church's doctrinal prohibition of usury. We literally cannot afford to ignore McCall's rigorous argument, animated by the Church's long tradition of reflection, that the economy must be conformed to principles of justice, including commutative justice and not just distributive justice. As McCall shows, it defies reason and justice for the basic human need of shelter to be an opportunity for wealth redistribution upward. Western banks have seen the wisdom in providing shari'a compliant banking. Why not banking that avoids usury and meets the demands of commutative justice? McCall gives readers compelling reason to implore state and Church alike to denounce usury from the housetops and to prohibit it through law. It is, after all, no more than justice demands. I applaud McCall's radical and wise call for a return to ancient principles in order to redeem our future."--Patrick McKinley Brennan, Professor of Law and John F. Scarpa Chair in Catholic Legal Studies